AFTER THE ATTACKS: THE TRADE CENTER

AFTER THE ATTACKS: THE TRADE CENTER; Heart-Rending Discoveries as Digging Continues in Lower Manhattan

By SUSAN SACHS

Published: September 15, 2001

Swarming with volunteers and soaked through by a chilly rain, the area of the World Trade Center disaster has become a muddy, malodorous and frenetic village built around shifting mounds of debris that, yesterday, yielded only the dead.

Throughout the day, a steady trickle of firefighters and rescue workers carried body bags from the piles of wreckage to refrigerated trucks that were parked in several places around the 16-acre site.

One worker who had tunneled into the debris said he had found the remains of people strapped into what seemed to be airplane seats. Another, in one of the most searing discoveries among the ruins, found the body of a flight attendant, her hands bound.

While no survivors were found by late in the evening, the rescuers continued to operate on the assumption that, given the right circumstances, people could still be alive somewhere in the rubble.

Working in the tangle of concrete and steel from the shattered buildings, they found wallets, luggage, blackened computer keyboards and shards of furniture. Sometimes they found a body, but simply marked it and burrowed further into the wet wreckage.

''There is a window in which people might still be alive, and they want to concentrate on getting to them,'' said Dr. James Boston, who was supervising one of the temporary morgues scattered around the devastation. ''So the workers are passing by bodies in the rubble and moving on.''

The rain both helped and hurt the effort, workers said. It cleared away the dust that had hovered over the site. But it also filled air cavities under the rubble with water and made the piles slippery.

Across the landscape of trucks, twisted metal and muck, the scene combined the mundane and the macabre.

On the northwest edge of the trade center area, workers took advantage of the abandoned restaurants in the food court of the World Financial Center. Some ran electrical cords along the ceiling and hung light bulbs, adding an odd holiday look to the yellowish gloom inside.

Others got the kitchens going to serve hot food to the rescuers and cleared away the neat table settings, covered in dust, to make room for firefighters who slumped over and napped. In one restaurant, a group of equipment operators found a cache of still-cold beer.

But the food court also served as a walkway for people carrying body bags from the rubble to a temporary morgue.

At one point in the afternoon, a group of searchers appeared with a stretcher. A filled body bag was laid out on it and on top of that, someone had placed a black New York Fire Department helmet. Everyone understood the message, and as the group passed, all the people stopped eating. The courtyard fell silent. Many of the workers slowly took off their hard hats and bowed their heads.

Both security and organization at the site improved by the hour as city officials struggled to bring some order to the confusing mass of volunteers who had managed to get close to the rescue work but who, in some cases, milled about with little to do. By the end of the day, food and supply distribution points had been established around well-marked command posts.

Earlier, the disarray had prompted Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen to issue a curt plea for no more volunteers.

''We now have got to get control back of the scene,'' Mr. Von Essen said. ''We think we can do it much more efficiently with our own people. So we will not look for any help from outsiders anymore.''

There was at least one report of looting at a darkened store in Lower Manhattan and instances of people pretending to be construction or rescue workers to get past the police barricades.

Officials were especially rankled by the appearance late Thursday night of a woman who, they said, made the claim that she had spoken by cell phone with survivors under the rubble -- a story that sent a rush of hope and then disappointment through the ranks of the exhausted rescue teams. The woman, Sugeil Mejia, 24, was arrested yesterday morning and charged with reckless endangerment, obstructing fire operations and filing false police reports, said Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik.

Volunteers with authentic skills continued to plead for a chance to help in the search and cleanup, but officials began screening them carefully. At the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, hundreds of people were turned away.

At one point, the police announced that only steamfitters, welders and ironworkers who could show their licenses and union cards would be taken to the trade center wreckage. But many others could not bring themselves to leave. ''We were off duty and couldn't just sit around,'' said Bill Kiger, a firefighter from Rahway, N.J.

He and three coworkers insisted that they had extensive experience doing rescue work in tunnels and collapsed buildings. But so, apparently, had many of the volunteers who were already working. The New Jersey firefighters were given the task of carrying bags of donated clothing to trucks in a parking lot across from the convention center.

''Hopefully by the end of the day we will get down to the site,'' said Mr. Kiger. ''But anything we can do is worthwhile.''

At the edges of the vast ruined expanse, the small town that has risen to serve the rescue operation hummed with incessant activity.

A police command center was set up in a two-story Burger King, which also served as a temporary feeding station. At times it also seemed like a bazaar as loads of donated clothing, including an incongruous bag full of velvet tops with spaghetti straps, were distributed by volunteers to the rain-soaked workers.

Deserted buildings in the neighborhood became dormitories. A search-and-rescue team from Indiana found a haven in Deutsche Bank, where they slept Thursday night on chairs and the floor. More workers stretched out in the lobby and mezzanine of the Embassy Suites hotel in the World Financial Center. Someone even kept the bathrooms in the hotel stocked with toothbrushes and baby wipes, while hot breakfast was served in the morning in the Brokers Loft bar there.

Some neighborhood shops -- all abandoned in the attack -- have been raided for supplies like batteries, water and rain gear. Any that sold disposable cameras appeared to have been cleaned out.

To break the tension, bottled-up grief and just plain exhaustion, some of the workers even indulged in a bit of fantasy.

Early yesterday morning, just as dawn was breaking over the scene of wreckage and death, a group of firefighters on a break from the grim routine of searching the rubble was seen in the Brooks Brothers store in 1 Liberty Plaza, joking and trying on coats and top hats.

Photos: Rescue workers received ministrations to aching backs and limbs at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center yesterday. And since fatigue is not restricted to humans, a volunteer, Jan Price, massaged a German shepherd that had been sniffing out victims in the trade center rubble. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times); With vehicles in short supply, rescue workers heading for a break yesterday hitched a ride on a delivery truck. (Justin Lane for The New York Times)